The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2 mar 2010 - 608 pagine
The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. 

When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still.
 

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Sommario

Joseph Banks in Paradise
1
Herschel on the Moon
60
Balloonists in Heaven
125
Herschel Among the Stars
163
Mungo Park in Africa
211
Davy on the Gas
235
Dr Frankenstein and the Soul
305
Davy and the Lamp
337
Sorcerer and Apprentice
381
Young Scientists
435
Epilogue
467
Bibliography
485
References
497
Acknowledgements
526
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Informazioni sull'autore (2010)

Richard Holmes is the author of Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer; Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer; Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage; Shelley: The Pursuit (for which he received the Somerset Maugham Award); Coleridge: Early Visions; and Coleridge: Darker Reflections (a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist). He lives in England.

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